This year marked the formal end of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, too, ended a regime of ultra-low interest rates that took hold after the Great Recession, culminating with a frenzied financial bacchanalia during the pandemic itself.
In the 2010s, tech companies, their founders and their tech workers were the darlings of local economic development strategies. As an episode of Technical.ly’s Off the Sidelines podcast back in fall 2020 explained, major investors sought a high rate of return during that cheap-money decade, and promising tech startups fit the profile. Money flooded in, generating thousands of tech unicorns, millions of tech workers and the communities they developed. If you ever saw an architectural rendering of an urban office back then, there was invariably a laptop-toting professional with a latte who was supposed to be a software developer.
All that changed in 2023. It’s a new era of ecosystem building. Tech valuations plummeted; once-bulletproof startups laid off hundreds of thousands of employees, and local tech communities questioned their place in the world.
For us at Technical.ly, a news organization that has reported on local tech economies for a decade and a half (celebrating 15 years in 2024!), this has also meant an update to what we offer. To close out 2023, we’re publishing our inaugural reports on the state of the local tech economies we report in, and we’re bringing it all together with a national outlook.
Join us Tuesday, Dec. 12 at 12 p.m. EST for our assessment on the state of local tech economies. Register here.
As Technical.ly CEO and a veteran of our journalism, I’ll bring together our cross-market reporting and national trends to give a sense of the national landscape. I’ll then tap a group of guests from tech ecosystem builders for what they’re seeing in their home market: Maryland’s TEDCO, the Tech Council of Delaware, the City of Philadelphia Department of Commerce and the Pittsburgh Innovation District.
Backing it all up are our inaugural “State Of” reports, which build on our reporting. Here’s a roundup of our local State of the Tech Economy reports:
See you then.
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